Page 21 of ClickBack

“You okay?”

“You asking me?”

“You look concerned.”

I laugh, and she laughs with me. The movement almost finishes me.

“Don’t do that,” I tell her.

“What?”

“Laugh.”

Naturally, that makes it worse. I kiss her to stop it and start moving before she finds another way to make me lose my mind.

She meets me. Tentatively at first, then with more certainty, one leg hooking around my side as she finds an angle she likes. When I pull back too far, she draws me closer. When the pace catches her wrong, her hand flattens against my shoulder, and I ease up. There is no mystery in what she wants once I stop expecting her to receive whatever I decide to give her.

“That,” she says. “Yes.”

Her fingers spread along my back. I go deeper without getting rougher, and she lifts to meet the next stroke, her mouth open against mine. I’m trying to keep my head long enough for her to get what she came for when she puts her hand to my face.

“You’re beautiful.”

I look at her.

“You told me to say it again.”

There’s a smile in her voice, but she means it. I can see that, and for reasons I don’t have time to examine, it’s harder to take than anything else she’s said tonight. I kiss her instead of answering.

She holds me closer. The bed strikes the wall once, and her eyes open wide before she laughs.

“Your neighbors,” she says.

“They’ll live,” I tell her.

After that, I don’t hear the wall. She finds the pace with me, and I feel her start to lose it, her hands gripping my back, her legs tightening as I stay where she needs me.

“Jarrett. Don’t stop.”

I don’t. She comes holding me against her, her face turned into my shoulder, and I follow before she has finished shaking. For a few seconds I can’t do anything but keep my weight on my arms and let her run her palm down my back.

“Damn,” she says at last.

I laugh into the pillow. “You all right?”

“I’m going to need a minute before I submit my findings.”

I move off her carefully, take care of the condom in the bathroom, and go to the kitchen for water. When I return, she has claimed the bed diagonally, sheet over her hips, one arm across her eyes.

She accepts the glass without sitting all the way up. I wait until she’s finished and put it on the nightstand.

“If my IUD is lodged behind my left lung, I’m billing you,” she says.

“You send invoices on weekends?”

“For emergencies.”

I get in beside her, and she rolls toward me. I’m still smiling when my phone rings.